Part 19 (1/2)
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to the chin--and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and gave him to this feller, and says:
”Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his forepaws just even with Dan'l, and I'll give the word.” Then he says, ”One--two--three--jump!” and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use--he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anch.o.r.ed out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--this way--at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, ”Well, _I_ don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.”
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, ”I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of his neck, and lifted him up and says, ”Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pounds!” and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was and he was the maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And--
(Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.) And, turning to me as he moved away, he said: ”Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to be gone a second.”
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond _Jim_ Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the _Rev. Leonidas W._ Smiley, and so I started away.
At the door I met the social Wheeler returning, and he b.u.t.tonholed me and recommenced:
”Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and--”
”Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!” I muttered good-naturedly, and, bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.
THE CHARMING FRENCHMAN
BOSSUET [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve_]
As for the happiness itself, of which he would give us a just idea, the purely spiritual and internal happiness of the soul in the other life, he sums it up in an expression which concludes a happy development of the subject, and he defines it: _Reason always attentive and always contented_. Take reason in its liveliest and most luminous sense, the pure flame disengaged from the senses.
ROUSSEAU [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve_]
It is from him that the sentiment of nature is reckoned among us, in the eighteenth century. It is from him also that is dated, in our literature, _the sentiment of domestic life; of that homely, poor, quiet, hidden life, in which are acc.u.mulated so many treasures of virtue and affection_. Amid certain details, in bad taste, in which he speaks of robbery and of eatables, how one pardons him on account of that old song of childhood, of which he knows only the air and some words st.i.tched together, but which he always wished to recover, and which he never recalls, old as he is, without a soothing charm!
JOUBERT [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve_]
Taste, for him, is the literary conscience of the soul....
M. Joubert was, in his day, the most delicate and the most original type of that cla.s.s of honest people which the old society alone produced,--spectators, listeners who had neither ambition nor envy, who were curious, at leisure, attentive, and disinterested, who took an interest in everything, the true amateurs of beautiful things. ”To converse and to know--it was in this, above all things, that consisted, according to Plato, the happiness of private life.” This cla.s.s of connoisseurs and of amateurs, so fitted to enlighten and to restrain talent, has almost disappeared in France since every one there has followed a profession. ”We should always,” said M. Joubert, ”have a corner of the head open and free, that we may have a place for the opinions of our friends, where we may lodge them provisionally. It is really insupportable to converse with men who have, in their brains, only compartments which are wholly occupied, and into which nothing external can enter. Let us have _hospitable hearts and minds_.”
Life is a duty; we must make a pleasure of it, so far as we can, as of all other duties. If the care of cheris.h.i.+ng it is the only one with which it pleases Heaven to charge us, we must acquit ourselves gaily and with the best possible grace, and poke that sacred fire, while warming ourselves by it all we can, till the word comes to us: That will do.
MME D'HOUDETOT [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve_]
In the years to which we refer--that is, the years immediately preceding 1800--there were gathered in the salon of this charming old lady the remnants both of fas.h.i.+onable and philosophical society--never, indeed, entirely exiled thence. It may be said of Mme d'Houdetot that her ideal existence was always bounded by that Montmorency valley where the ardent devotion of Jean Jacques has engraved her memory, as it were, in immortal characters. There, again and again, her idyllic spring-time renewed its bloom, and the freshness of her impressions continued unimpaired until her dying day. She even remained in the country during the Reign of Terror, her retreat being respected, and her relatives flocking about her; and ”I can readily believe,” writes Mme de Remusat, in a charming portrait of her venerable friend, ”that she retains, of those frightful days, merely the memory of the increased tenderness and consideration which they procured for her.”
MME DE ReMUSAT [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve_]
O mothers, gather your children about you early. Dare to say, when they come into the world, that your youth is pa.s.sing into theirs. O mothers, be mothers, and you will be wise and happy!
DIDEROT [Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve_]
If the _Encyclopedia_ was in Diderot's time considered his princ.i.p.al social work, his princ.i.p.al glory in the eyes of the men of to-day consists in his having been the first to create the emotional and eloquent style of criticism. It is through this that he has become immortal, through this that he will be for ever dear to us journalists of every sort and condition. Let us bow down to him as our father, and as the founder of this style of criticism.
Before Diderot's time, the French style of criticism had been, firstly, as offered by Bayle, of a precise, inquiring, and subtle tone. Fenelon represented criticism as an elegant and delicate art, while Rollin exhibited its most useful and honest side. From a due sense of decency, I refrain from mentioning the names of Freron and Des Fontaines. But nowhere yet had criticism acquired anything like vividness, fertility, and penetration; it had not yet found its soul. Diderot was the first to find it. Naturally inclined to look over defects, and to admire good qualities, ”I am more affected,” he remarked, ”by the charms of virtue than the deformity of vice; I quietly turn away from the wicked and _fly forward to meet the good_. If there happens to be a beautiful spot in a book, a character, a picture, or a statue, it is there that I let my eyes rest; I can only see this beautiful spot, I can only remember it, while the rest I nearly forget. What do I become when everything is beautiful!” This inclination to welcome everything with enthusiasm--this sort of universal admiration--undoubtedly had its danger. It is said of him that he was singularly happy ”in never having encountered a wicked man nor a bad book.” For, even if the book were bad, he would unconsciously impute to the author some of his own ideas. Like the alchemist, he found gold in the melting-pot, from the fact he had placed it there himself. However, it is to him that all honour is due for having introduced among us the fertile criticism of _beauties_, which he subst.i.tuted for that of _defects_. Chateaubriand himself, in that portion of the _Genius of Christianity_ in which he eloquently discourses on literary criticism, only follows the path opened by Diderot....